<p>No. 200K is not middle class anywhere. It might not allow you to keep up with the neighbors in some places but it’s not middle class.</p>
<p>
Having four children is a choice, one that will necessarily mean that less can be provided for each child. That’s not the colleges’ problem to solve.</p>
<p>Dgdzdad, while there are many definitions of “middle class” I challenge you to find one that includes $200,000 income and a $1 million house. </p>
<p>Try this: [USA</a> TODAY](<a href=“http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2080565]USA”>http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/2080565)</p>
<p>Well, President Obama agrees with me. When he was promoting a “middle class tax cut” he included incomes under $250k. A million-dollar home in my neck of the woods would probably cost $150-200k in many areas. I know many, many families who make combined incomes of $150-$200k/year and struggle to maintain a middle class lifestyle.</p>
<p>Politicians are out of touch with reality and want votes. It’s not indicative of anything other than that.</p>
<p>You can raise a family in a house with only one bathroom.
We did.
$200,000 a year has choices, $50,000 doesn’t.
Like moving.</p>
<p>Iron Maiden, interesting article. I legitimately feel bad for anyone who thinks they “need” 100k salary to be comfortable outside of an extreme few places. JMO</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter if you consider incomes of 200K as middle class or not. 3.9% of household incomes make more. With that kind of income, you have a lot of resources and choices that most do not have. If you pay for a school that costs 60K/year, you still have a great income stream that many people would be happy to have.</p>
<p>I don’t know if anyone has done a study, but it would be interesting to see a graph of the family financial status of the student bodies at the elite schools. On the surface, it would appear that the vast majority are going to be either very rich kids whose families can easily afford to pay full freight, or poor to lower middle class kids who are getting substantial need-based aid, but very few in-between.</p>
<p>This topic has been discussed many times here and very much beaten to death.
But I will make one additional comment.</p>
<p>Many posts over the various threads have brought up the concept of choice.
That many of us in the (upper) middle class throughout the years could have afforded to send our children to elite merit-less colleges but, instead, somehow chose not to. That we decided to make life choices along the way (buying an expensive house, paying for soccer teams, going on vacations etc.) and therefore we must now face the consequences of our life-long bad decision making.</p>
<p>Hogwash! That doesnt, at all, address the real issue.</p>
<p>Weekly violin lessons for our eight year old did not cause us a decade later to be unable to pay a quarter of a million dollars in college expenses.</p>
<p>Thats ridiculous.</p>
<p>The real issue here is the current jumbled byzantine convoluted sellers market and the vastly over-priced cost of higher education. </p>
<p>Ive read articles that discuss COA models equating to approximately ten percent of gross annual income. That seems to be a reasonable starting point. What we have now instead is price gouging and a system that is broken.</p>
<p>Unless one is extremely wealthy, the first time one runs an EFC calculator will probably be quite shocking. Then finding out that the top top schools only give financial aid, not merit aid will be the second shock. Those with very high EFCs have the luxury of choosing a less expensive state school that is well below their EFC. They have the choice of choosing the less expensive school or making the lifestyle choices to be able to afford the full pay expensive privates. Those will lower incomes and assets dont have the choice of paying less than their EFC at a state school. Their EFC will be just as unaffordable, but they will have to find a way to deal with it, which is usually taking large amounts of loans. This is the reality to which those that are new to the college search have to adjust. In the US, college is a privilege.</p>
<p>Well said, both GolfFather and MidWestM.</p>
<p>It is a complicated and extremely personal decision. The fact that our kids made the choice of attending schools where we would not be full pay will help them later in life…in a good way.</p>
<p>I get all weepy reading about the poor $200K income folks who can barely scrape by, and can’t afford to send their little snowflakes to Harvard. Boo hoo.</p>
<p>You are barking up the wrong tree, raboofboof.</p>
<p>DGDzDad (post #50), I think you’re probably right.</p>
<p>GolfFather, it’s what the market will bear. The top-top schools are private and can charge whatever they feel like. That they choose to not award merit aid, oh well. The problem is (for whatever reason) students want to go to an Ivy type school. Not all of them can. Most states have a flagship U that can provide a great, relatively affordable education. But students always want to go out of state…</p>
<p>It is all about entitlement. In the end, people think that if they work hard and have gained success through their efforts, that they are entitled to things. For some it is homes, vacations, camps, multiple cars, private lessons and programs for kids, etc. For others it is a good education. For many it is both. There is a belief that if a student works hard they deserve a good education and if their parents work hard, they should be able to send them to a good school. And a good school for many is an elite private university or college.</p>
<p>Nothing wrong with that, really. </p>
<p>The problem is that while we may be willing to pay a premium to live in a better neighborhood or own a bigger house (and understand the cost involved), most people are not prepared for the cost of education. They feel that a private education at an elite school should be within their reach since other tokens of success are, but they have no idea what one really needs to pay to go to a private school. </p>
<p>Again, you can’t fault someone for assuming they can pay for the best education available if they consider themselves successful and good wage earners.</p>
<p>The problem arises in that the price of college is astronomical and since they are ill-prepared for these numbers, there is resentment that they can’t afford it.</p>
<p>And no doubt the shock is magnified when they realize that others are somehow sending children to these elite schools by being awarded financial aid that they are not entitled to.</p>
<p>If you think about it, what other “premium” product gives a special discount based on a lower income? That’s the crux of people’s disbelief. It’s not that they don’t want to help out the next guy, but it is hard for people to accept that 1) they can’t afford the colleges they expected and 2) with the realization that their successful children may not be able to go, how is it that other people’s children who come from lower income families can?</p>
<p>So yes, it is entitlement–but it is also entitlement on the side of the kid getting financial aid to believe that they deserve to go to a private elite school based on their grades, etc. when the kid from the wealthier family with the same grades can’t afford to attend because of the cost.</p>
<p>So it is a murky situation and people really shouldn’t throw stones. My own husband went to an elite college based on financial aid. And now we are on the other side, financially sucessful, but “struggling” to send our own children to a private univerisity. So my advice to those who can get aid…down the road you may see the flip side of the coin. No need to be snarky :)</p>
<p>The cost of private college tuition has far outpaced the rate of inflation mostly because of 2 factors:</p>
<p>1) schools have a spending problem</p>
<p>2) they’ve moved to a high tuition/ high aid pricing structure. Not only do full-pay parents have to pay inflated tuition for own child, they have to pay the inflated tuition for someone else’s child too.</p>
<p>How much longer until this pricing structure goes bust because Atlas shrugs?</p>
<p>
I have an idea: Don’t work and become “poor” while your kids are going to an expensive school. Your kid will get all kinds of financial aid from government & school.</p>
<p>Since so many families ( & students) feel that only a " dream" school is worth shelling out money for, (& “dream” schools oddly enough, don’t seem to offer merit aid)I expect that as long as expectations for amenities are high, applications will continue even as complaints increase.</p>
<p>Don’t work and become “poor” while your kids are going to an expensive school. Your kid will get all kinds of financial aid from government & school.</p>
<p>Or if you cant bear to reduce your income down to the median, :eek:
you could always find a more affordable solution like a directional public or a school that has an a agreement with your state.
[Western</a> Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) | Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education](<a href=“http://wiche.edu/wue]Western”>Save On College Tuition | Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE))</p>